Gloomy

The news out of New Orleans and her suburbs is mixed -- some parts seem all right, some parts are ruined forever. We don't know about my parents or my brother's house yet. My oldest brother's house in Destrehan is probably okay. My brother who was actually in the city, the one who got airlifted out, his apartment is gone.

But so many people have lost so much. So much is lost. The stories that are coming out are so awful.

Here:

http://www.nola.com/

The kid is having nightmares every night -- that's when she can sleep -- and we didn't even let her watch the news. This is just from what she overheard us talking about, and the bits she got off NPR. (She has displaced it onto aliens. She is worried that aliens are going to invade from Mars. She makes us leave the lights on every night. But during the day she asks about what would happen if it flooded here, and whether any kids got caught in the flood, and what happens to orphans in New Orleans, and whether parents left their kids behind when they left New Orleans, and I know what's happening, all right.)

I haven't told her about the lost dogs and cats. She couldn't take the lost pets. On NPR this morning, the reporter told about packs of strays running up and down the neutral grounds in New Orleans, scanning the crews of the rescue boats, looking for their owners -- and the rescue crews speculating about how soon they would have to start shooting the strays. I don't turn on NPR anymore until after I have dropped the kid off at school, for obvious reasons.

Right after that, the rescue crew told three guys on a balcony they needed to leave. "There's no reason to stay," they pleaded with these guys. "We're going to bulldoze this whole area anyway. We're tearing down this whole part of the city anyway."

This is America. In America, these things are happening.